


Reversal of Roles

by Merfilly



Series: Avenged, Annealed, and Atoned [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Hero Worship, Other, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 11:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil is trying to be his own man on his own two feet... and then Cap arrives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reversal of Roles

It had felt good to go home, in many ways. The apartment was reassuringly untouched, everything in neat precision, just the way he preferred it. Living with Nick Fury had been an exercise in twitch-control; the director had methods, but they were inscrutable to Phil. Moving in with Natasha and Clint… at her insistence… had left him with little time to notice his surroundings. After tasting her methods of retraining, he was inclined to agree that Nick had coddled him. However, both of them were on mission, because Clint had decided they could go back to work. Apparently, both although Phil was fully recovered now.

One complete lap of the apartment, a thorough cleaning of his kitchen supplies, and then Phil settled on the couch with PBS on in the background. He always had found the various programs of orchestral music to be soothing, and this was his aim for his first night home. He wanted everything normal, so that he could finally pick up his life and be Agent Coulson, Fury's hand-picked coordinator for the Avengers Initiative.

`~`~`~`~`

The night sweats and terrors had not been wholly unexpected. Nick hadn't let him fall asleep alone very often, and his agents certainly hadn't.

Phil sat in the bed against the headboard, knees drawn up with his arms around them, just breathing. He could and would do this. The terrors were a natural reaction to his situation. They could be conquered.

He kept seeing those men and women he respected and cared for fighting for the world without him, because he had failed to keep himself strong enough to be at their side.

This would go away, he promised himself. All he needed was to get back in the field, do what he did best. Put one mission under his belt, and he would be able to look in the mirror and remember he had not failed; his near-death had possibly saved the world by forging a team out of a handful of anarchists.

Somehow, that thought did little to reassure him. No man wanted to be thought of as best for dying rather than living.

`~`~`~`~`

Annoyingly, there was nothing on docket currently that required Phil's methodology. Three days trying to find something to justify fieldwork, and three nights spent with the wake-ups that accompanied attempts at sleeping had Phil slightly edgier than he ever let the world see in him.

He called it an early day and made his way home. At this time of day, he certainly didn't expect to see more than the building's children, older people, and maybe a few of the ones who were out of work and preferred it that way. Instead, on his own floor, Phil saw a man in a hooded sweatshirt, with just the faint hint of confidence and skill in his lines that made Phil see 'dangerous potential'. This was not a building resident, all of whom Phil knew, including those who had changed in his lengthy absence.

Something pinged as familiar, and it kept Phil alert but slightly more open as he walked the length of the hall from the stairwell to his door. As he got near where the man was leaning on the wall, the man brought his head up and turned his face toward Phil... making every detail of just who he was click into place.

"Captain?" Phil questioned, proud that his voice did not crack.

"It's cold in here. Did they forget to pay the gas bill?" Captain America asked, just as domestically as if he were a real man and not an icon of salvation.

"Halls aren't heated, older building," Phil answered just as mundanely, opening his apartment door to let the man into the warmth.

"Makes me kind of wish one of my powers had to do with fire," Captain America said wryly, like he was joking with Phil of all things!

This... was odd. At least in Phil's mind, because Captain America was larger than life!

"Can I get you anything, Captain?"

"Root beer or pop, and for you to call me 'Steve'," the man answered immediately.

"Yes, Ca... Steve." Phil reached into the refrigerator and secured two of the long-necked, ice-cold glass bottles of root beer hidden down in the crisper drawer. They had been his vice for years, because of a random snapshot of Captain America drinking one.

"That's better. Can't have a man who saved the world on less than first name basis with me," Steve told him with a smile as they walked back into the living room.

Phil, having just lifted the bottle for a drink, coughed on the fizzing fumes of the root beer, thankful he hadn't actually drank yet. "Excuse me, sir?"

"None of the 'sir' stuff either." Steve sipped his drink, settling on the couch at the other end from Phil. "You did. We were all pretty much toast, but then Fury was telling us about a man with no powers, just heart, who went the full way for a block... and it snapped us out of our separated ways of thinking."

Phil was exceptionally glad he had long since trained out the possibility of a flush rising in his skin. "I did my duty."

Steve locked eyes with him. "And I've seen men break and run in the face of those kinds of odds, Phil. You stood your ground, you kept the enemy focused, and you still fought, even once you were injured and dying!"

"You..."

"I made Fury tell me. I had to know." Steve looked down, fiddling with the rim of his bottle. When he looked back up, his eyes were soft. "I thought, for a while, I killed you. Because you looked up to me, and might have pushed too hard. Pretty selfish of me, to be honest. Fury telling me... it made me see you're every bit the same kind of person my best friends were, the ones that have heart, drive, skill. The kind that won't stop. And I barely knew you."

"I'm merely a SHIELD agent, trained to do what is needed when needed with as little chance of failure as possible," Phil answered that with some discomfort building.

Steve frowned at him. "I don't think so. I think you're every bit the kind of man that is a real hero, that I would be proud to look up to... and have been."

"You...me?" Phil spluttered, because that was too much.

"Yeah. I've got my shield, the super-soldier serum... all of that. Makes it a lot easier." Steve set his drink down, reorienting his body more toward Phil. "You're just you, and you made that work in ways that Loki couldn't fully anticipate."

"Just..."

"...doing your duty or not, why can't you see it makes you every bit the hero?" Steve pressed.

"I don't want to just be the one who died, or almost," Phil blurted out. He then looked away, because that was a hell of a thing to admit to the man who had lost everything as if he had died, only to come back to a world that had moved on without him.

Pressure on his forearm made him turn back, to see Steve had rested his hand on that arm to get his attention. "You aren't. You're the man that gave us a fighting chance. And you're a man who chose to go back into the hidden war, despite nearly dying."

"How..."

"How'd I know you were alive? Pepper Potts called me a week or so ago. How'd I know you were back at work? The Widow called me four nights ago."

Natasha and Pepper. Phil wondered at the way both women had done what he couldn't, bringing Captain America back into his life.

"She didn't want you to be alone, you know?" Steve was saying.

"Who, Ms. Potts?" Phil asked, knowing that very few were aware of the complex relationship he maintained with the pair of agents he had handled for so long.

"Natasha." Steve half-smiled and ducked his head, almost shyly. "I, umm, didn't get Clint's hints in his call, which is why she called me instead."

So Clint and Natasha had contacted Captain America? And he was here, now, because they didn't want him to be alone? Part of him wanted to be offended. Another part fell harder into the security that was the three of them, because even on mission, they were trying to help him recover fully.

"I appreciate you coming by to check on me, then," Phil answered that. "I don't want to keep you from your own agenda."

Steve shook his head. "Not that easy, Phil... You gave me a reason to fight. Now you have to let me know you, the man, and not just the hero." There was a line of stubborn in the jawline Phil had studied entirely too many times, and Phil couldn't fully understand why.

"Why?"

"Only fair, if my biggest fanboy knows all about me, I should get the chance to know all about the man I've decided to 'fanboy' right back at," Steve told him with a faint grin.

Phil didn't even begin to know how to answer that, so he took a long drink of his root beer and wound up finishing it off. Steve let him retreat, for now, and did the same with his own.

"Come on... I found this great Italian place in Brooklyn," Steve told Phil, rising from the couch. "My treat. Seems Tony found a trust fund his dad set up in case I ever was rediscovered, so I'm good for it," Steve told him. "I'd rather spend it on my friends; it feels too weird to have money like that at my disposal."

"You know it is probably just Tony's money that he presented as a fund from his father?" Phil answered, before walking out with his idol.

"Yes, but I'm getting used to Tony's fibs as being the only way he and I can really deal with our past," Steve admitted.

"I'm sure that does get complicated, si...Steve."

"The world always is," Steve said. "People just think it was simpler back in my time; it really wasn't."

"I'd love to hear more, firsthand," Phil told him as they left the apartment.

"Story for a story?"

"Deal."

`~`~`~`~`


End file.
